Elegance doesn’t have to break the budget! We tend to associate elegant environments with “fancy,” expensive and maybe even completely out-of-reach. It doesn’t have to be that that way and certainly not in the hands of Interior design experts who know how to do the magic!
Whether it is your imagined remodel of the tired tasting room at the winery, your living room at home, your retail specialty shop or your professional services reception area — elegant transformation is never out of reach.
With commercial enterprises, the simple business fact of increased competition demands creative approaches to your presentation of products or services. Staying on that cutting edge means really seeing your physical commercial environment as others see it! Physical facilities have that formidable competitor: the Internet. It is great when the market physically finds you, and then also adds your website to their shopping opportunities. But if your purchasing market is primarily actual live customers, in person, on site, you have a presentation and competitive challenge that’s different from the good old days! Why not elegance?
Depending on the product or service in consideration, a website may be limited to introduction and showcasing – such as with professional services. Whereas products can be showcasedand ordered and purchased from websites. (That’s not intended as “news!”) There are many degrees of both circumstances, and any and all have equal opportunities for elegance!
Part of the challenge and the process is about tying all the parts of your presentation together. If your physical location and the facility itself looks like a poor relative compared to the temptations of your website, that’s a big mistake. Likewise, your classy physical presentation wants to be compatible with all your external promotion tools, including a website if you have one. As one aspect of your marketing changes, all should be reviewed – not the least of which is your physical site. Why not an upgrade to elegant?
Back to those assumptions about elegance! It means different things to different folks. Opulent or simple? Either can be elegant. Two primary tools are color and light. In the hands of experts who know the behaviors and properties of those concepts, amazing things can happen!
Large areas can be made to feel intimate when space planning, furnishings, lighting and colorwork are brought into harmony. Also, the textures of the materials chosen play important roles in softening what might have seemed harsh, or in making a once “cold” environment remarkably cozy and inviting.
Achieving a goal of elegance for an Interior space involves consideration of the client’s sense of comfort, their goals, the site use, and a sensitive understanding of the desired warmth and spacial intimacy. For instance, consider the goals of a wine tasting event! It’s a pretty intimate experience to taste exquisite wines that have been sleeping snugly in their barrels waiting to make their grande entrances! You sip, consider, rinse then sip again. Vintners want something very personal to happen with their visitors: Taste, linger, taste some more, choose and buy! A perfect opportunity for easy elegance.
Like so many other factors concerning Interior Design, there are many degrees of elegance; a direction to consider!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer (CID) in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visitwww.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
